The effects of children's gender perceptions of infants as "like me" or "not like me" on their behavioral interest in infants were experimentally manipulated. Thirty-seven boys and 34 girls at two age levels were observed in 10-minute encounters with unfamiliar seven-month-old infants and their mothers. (Author/RH)

A retrospective check of 100, white 4-year-olds (with IQ's of 140 or more) showed no precocity at age 8 months, as measured by the Bayley Scales of Mental and Motor Development. (ST)

A group of 20 abusive mothers and a group of 20 matched, nonabusive mothers were shown slides depicting infants in seven different emotional states. Abusive mothers were more likely to incorrectly identify specific signals of emotion and to label negative affect as positive. (Author/RH)

Data clearly supported the major hypotheses concerning the superiority of contingent reinforcement over nurturance in facilitiating imitation. (Authors)

Investigated the distinctiveness and recognizability of taste-elicited facial expressions in 12 newborns two hours of age. Findings demonstrated that newborns differentiate sour and bitter from each other and from salty, and discriminate between sweet and nonsweet. Judges accurately identified newborns' responses to sucrose, but systematically…

Examined the phenomenon by self-rejection in black children using a game-like situation with either a black or a white child as a partner. No consistent results were found to support previous findings of black self-rejection. (ST)

Using strict and lenient mathematics achievement cutoff scores to define a learning disability, respective groups of children who are math disabled (MLD, n = 15) and low achieving (LA, n = 44) were identified. These groups and a group of typically achieving (TA, n = 46) children were administered a battery of mathematical cognition, working…

Developmental levels of gender identity in preschool children were investigated. (JMB)

The theory of social comparison postulates that the tendency to compare one's performance to others' will decrease as a function of the discrepancy between the quality of one's own performance and that of the comparison person. (Author/MB)

Hypothesis was confirmed that more familiar and more ambiguous concepts would be less readily named in their less detailed representations. (Author/MB)

The ability of 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children to correctly identify videotaped segments as programs or commercials was examined. Results indicate that, when a task requiring minimal verbal response is used, preschoolers demonstrate an awareness of commercials as distinct from programs. (Author/MP)

Studied children's attributions and evaluations concerning defense mechanisms used by other children. Children negatively evaluated the blame-externalizing defense of projection and viewed it as a masculine characteristic. The internalizing defense of self-blame was evaluated more positively and viewed as a feminine characteristic. (Author/DB)

Sociodemographic correlates of patterns of racial socialization were examined using data from a national probability sample of 2,107 respondents. Results indicated that gender, age, marital status, region, and racial composition of the neighborhood predicted whether Black parents imparted racial socialization messages to their children. (PCB)

Results show that the ability to identify the odor of alcoholic beverages and know the norms for use of alcoholic beverages exists among preschool children. Findings also show that at least some aspects of that ability are enhanced by living in a family whose drinking pattern indicates heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages. (RH)